Common Enemies

Jacob Van LunenThursday, January 08, 2009

i, and welcome back to Building on a Budget. One of the most exciting things to happen in the last few weeks on Magic Online is the introduction of Pauper four-person tournaments in the not-so-aptly-named Eight-Player Constructed room. I've received a lot of requests asking me to explore this format and come up with some lists.

What is Pauper? Pauper is a Constructed Magic format where players are only permitted to play with commons. Cranial Plating is banned. The format is newly supported on Magic Online and largely unexplored.

Other decks that seem to have larger followings are Mono-Green Elves, White Weenie, Storm, and more dedicated Affinity decks.

When building your first Pauper deck, it's important to recognize the characteristics of the format and build accordingly.

1. Most decks have artifacts!

Cards like Ancient Grudge may seem like awesome sideboard choices, and they are, but they may have a place in your main deck when you consider that about 80 percent of your opponents' decks will be packing a healthy dose of metal.

2. Mass removal spells are almost nonexistent—take advantage!

Usually when playing Constructed it's hard to know when to play another threat or hold back. In Pauper you can happily play threat after threat and not have to worry.

3. Card advantage is hard to come by—take it where you can.

It's important to make sure you won't run out of steam. There are a number of cards that I would recommend not leaving home without at least a few of:

Civic Wayfinder:Civic Wayfinder is incredible! It provides a body that can attack or trade, it fixes your mana, and it puts you at plus one card. If your deck has a significant amount of green and is playing "fair," this should definitely make the cut.

Mulldrifter: The power level of this adorable monster is underestimated at this point in my opinion. It provides an evasive body and two cards, and there aren't many deals like this in a world of commons.

Thoughtcast: If your deck is playing enough artifacts it's important to bring this to battle.

Ravnica Block bounce lands: These are pure card advantage. They fix your mana and set you up to do despicable things.

There are a lot of cards that I've always want to build a deck around that just didn't seem strong enough in formats like Standard or Extended. One of my favorite cards of all time is Leonin Squire; it's just so much fun to play with.

I decided the best way to explore a new format would be to shove all of my perceived "best cards" into a deck and take it for a test drive. After some fiddling around with numbers I made this list.

Man-o'-War:Man-o'-War lets us keep up with the decks that come out of the gates quickly. It's probably the weakest card in the deck, but I don't think there's a better three cost creature available. It has enough synergy with our Momentary Blinks to make it good enough to maindeck.

Blind Hunter:Blind Hunter is one of the best cards in Pauper Magic. A resolved Blind Hunter will result in an 8 point life swing before a single attack. It has excellent synergy with Momentary Blink, and the combination of those cards in your deck will make your opponent play very differently. An opponent will almost never let themselves drop to 4 life while you have Blind Hunter in fear of Momentary Blink plus flashback. You can abuse this accordingly and often manipulate the pace of play.

Mulldrifter: I've said it before and I'll say it again: Mulldrifter is the most adorable little mush ever. It's hard to explain just how incredible it is in the deck. It's the best Momentary Blink target in the entire format and it's an effective threat with Bonesplitter. I'm almost certain that Mulldrifter is the best card in the entire format—play four.

The Spells

Pyrite Spellbomb: It's fetchable with your Trinket Mage and it kills most creatures played in the format. It goes to the head and, at times, you can Blink your Leonin Squires and loop enough damage to finish off your opponent. This is probably one of the most valuable Trinket Mage targets in the deck, and I've been very happy with it.

Momentary Blink: I've already explained how powerful this is with our creature base, and it's absolutely necessary in the deck.

Ancient Grudge: It may seem awkward playing this in the main, and if you want to swap it out for some Steamcore Weirds I wouldn't fault you. A big problem I've had in Pauper is dealing with early Myr Enforcers. A lot of times people just drop a pair of 4/4s by the third turn and I can't find the time to stabilize. Ancient Grudge gives me the ability to deal with the lightning-fast draws that Affinity decks get sometimes and usually has relevant targets in other matchups too. Our deck draws a lot of extra cards, and it's not particularly important that all our cards do something. You'll find yourself with a full grip most of the time, and it's fine to have some maindeck hate against a deck as powerful as Affinity.

Bonesplitter: It's important to note that most of our creatures are 2/2s. When our opponents start playing 2/4 Spire Golems and 4/4 Myr Enforcers it's important to have a way to trade with their creatures. We can fetch up the singleton Bonesplitter and suddenly all our creatures can trade with whatever our opponents are attacking or blocking with. This is an extremely important one-of—don't cut it!

The Lands

The artifacts lands are tutor targets for Trinket Mage. The Ravnica bounce lands are incredibly powerful, and they smooth out our mana while providing us with extra cards. The mana for this deck is surprisingly smooth with our nine cantrip mana-fixing artifacts.

The Sideboard

Steamcore Weird: I don't really like Steamcore Weird, but I think it's important for our deck to stabilize quickly. This card accomplishes the stabilization goal very well. It takes out a Ninja of the Deep Hours and stays around to block the army of Ravenous Rats that your opponent is trying to kill you with.

Rain of Embers and Hurly Burly: Elves can get some really aggressive draws that put our deck on the defensive. These cards are usually actual two-mana Wrath of Gods in this matchup, and it's important to have them at the ready. They're also valuable tools against the Storm decks that try to kill you with Empty the Warrens tokens.

The rest of the sideboard is filled out with additional copies of main-deck cards that work especially well in particular matchups.